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thumb Kanji for mu
When Zen master Zhaozhou (Chinese; in Japanese, Joshu) was asked, "Does a dog have Buddha-nature?", he replied, "Wú". Some earlier thinkers had maintained that creatures such as dogs did have the Buddha-nature; others, that they did not. Zhaozhou sought to avoid this speculation by pointing out that it was a waste of time.
According to the Jargon File, a collection of hacker jargon and culture, Mu is considered by Discordians to be the correct answer to the classic trick question "Have you stopped beating your wife yet?". Assuming that you have no wife or you have never beaten your wife, the answer "yes" is wrong because it implies that you used to beat your wife and then stopped, but "no" is worse because it suggests that you have one and are still beating her. As a result, various Discordians proposed "mu" as the correct answer, alleged by them to mean "Your question cannot be answered because it depends on incorrect assumptions". Hackers tend to be sensitive to logical inadequacies in language, and many have adopted this suggestion with enthusiasm.